BAC can charge whatever they want, for crying out loud. Nobody is compelled to bank there. If people do not wish to pay for the convenience of using their debit cards, switch banks or, better yet, use cash!

The left never considers the unintended consequences of its policies. Just like the old luxury tax on yachts -- remember who that hurt?

BAC can charge whatever they want, for crying out loud. Nobody is compelled to bank there.

True

If people do not wish to pay for the convenience of using their debit cards, switch banks or, better yet, use cash!

Simply switching banks may not be the quick fix you invision. Many banks that are $10b or larger in size are going this route because of a change in the law in how they charge for debit transactions. Smaller banks are not effected by the new laws so odds are they will not go that route in order attract new customers.

I like the idea of going to 100% cash. If you can't manage to do that change over to a credit union and use their debit card. I doubt they'll charge you a monthly fee ever to use it.

Don't be fooled by President Obama's tough criticism of BofA. No one has Wall Street's back like the Obama Administration. The President's minions will be there for the banks whenever they need liquidity / a bailout.

Don't get your shorts all in a bunch. The reporting on this story might be a little... off.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you stop this service charge?

OBAMA: Well, you can stop it because -- if you say to the banks, you don't have some inherent right just to, you know, get a certain amount of profit if your customers are being mistreated -- that you have to treat them fairly and transparently. And my hope is, is that you're going to see a bunch of the banks who say to themselves, "You know what? This is actually not good business practice."

So I guess there is more to the quote than reported, and I guess that Obama means us people types when he says "you can stop it", not the Gov because that would be "I" or "we" can stop it. Of course the role Obama wants the CFPB to play is to make sure that we know about the fee, not allow it to be hidden in forty pages of fine print.

Banks are just posturing. It will be like with airlines. Banks will add fees, other banks will advertise they have no fees, people will change to banks with no fees, banks with fees will lower their price to seem cheaper (even though it evens out with the fees). This will sufficiently confuse consumers for 5 years until the banks charging fees realize they are just increasing their own overhead without making any extra income and have a huge marketing event where they drop their fees.

Reading of the BAC $5 debit fee, my first thought was that they were using the fee not so much to produce extra bank income as to flush out low-end-high-maintenance customers. So, a streamlining operation which would allow them to cut employees while retaining their high net worth customers. But, yeah they could be totally desperate and grasping for whatever nickels they can get. If that's the case, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around Buffett's intervention. He's not so dumb as to invest in a total loser is he?